Rareptiles

Inspiration

With the excitement and buzz around NFT art, NBA top shot, Cryptokitties, and blockchain in general, we wanted to direct the hype around non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into increasing awareness about biodiversity and endangered animals. Specifically, we chose endangered reptiles after reading about illegal reptile trading. With our platform, our hope is to raise money for and create conversation about endangered animals.

What it does

We built an NFT platform, where users can adopt, sell and buy reptile NFTs similar to NBA top shot and Cryptokitties. With every transaction, a portion of the money is kept and is donated to charities that focus on helping endangered species.

How we built it

Solidity - language to write smart contracts for the blockchain React/CSS- Frontend app, and css wizardry to make animations web3 - JS library to interact with the blockchain network Python - Parse and filter data from IUCN dataset EchoAR - View cards in augmented reality

Challenges we ran into

It was difficult to code the smart contract because Solidity was a new language for all of us and it was our first time coding a smart contract.

Accomplishments that We're proud of

We built a fully functional app on the Ethereum blockchain where we can mint NFTs (adopt rareptiles) and exchange rareptiles for actual cryptocurrency.

What we learned

We learned about NFTs, smart contracts, blockchain, React

What's next for Rareptiles

After a few fixes, we could actually deploy this onto a real blockchain! We do need a few ETH to cover the cost of contract creation though...
Our Python script can be used to expand to new datasets
Auctions similar to other NFT marketplaces
Random packs (more gamification)
More educational info and data (Links to educational websites per reptile etc)